Sandler leaves mark on Transylvania’

Sunday

Sep 30, 2012 at 6:00 AM

Family Filmgoer

“Hotel Transylvania” PG — Kids 8 and older will no doubt giggle their way through this animated monster comedy, offered both in 3-D and regular 2-D format, with Adam Sandler as the lead voice. But in keeping with Sandler’s humor (he’s also an executive producer of the film), the jokes are pretty lowbrow and obvious, and the story wins no awards for originality or depth. Still, the film has lots of funny moments.

Dracula (Sandler), we learn in a prologue, built a fabulous castle/hotel on a mountaintop in Transylvania to cater only to monsters — no humans allowed. His daughter, Mavis, is a teen (voice of Selena Gomez), about to turn 118. He’s throwing her a party and inviting all his monster pals. She begs her overprotective dad for some freedom, so he lets her go to explore the nearest human village.

She doesn’t realize that it’s little more than a movie set, populated by zombies that her father, still afraid to let her see the world, has hired. Then a nice human backpacker named Jonathan (Andy Samberg) knocks on the hotel door. Dracula can’t kill him, as he’s sworn off human blood and violence, but he’s worried.

He disguises Jonathan as a cousin of the Frankenstein monster. Then, of course, Jonathan and Mavis hit it off. What’s a vampire dad to do?

THE BOTTOM LINE: Kids younger than 8 may flinch at seeing Dracula and his daughter Mavis turn into bats, and to see the likes of Frankenstein’s monster, the Mummy, and the Fly, as well as blobs, skeletons, shrunken heads and more, all partying. Some of the monsters lose heads or limbs while roughhousing and then reattach them. There are jokes about drinking blood. Though he’s sworn off violence, Dracula does have a temper, and his face goes scarily red while he seethes. His tantrums are always quick.

“Won’t Back Down” PG — A teacher and a mom, both at their wits’ end, join forces to take over a failing Pittsburgh elementary school in this sermonizing saga. There are too many speeches, but thanks to a terrific cast, the story packs enough emotional power to move thoughtful teens.

Another caveat: The film purports to offer a balanced point of view, but paints the teachers’ union as villains while never criticizing the far-from-perfect charter school movement.

Jamie (Maggie Gyllenhaal) works two jobs to support herself and her little girl, Malia (Emily Alyn Lind). Malia is dyslexic and has a terrible time in second grade at her failing elementary school, where the incompetent teacher ignores her. Nona (Viola Davis), a gifted teacher, has the other second-grade class in the same school, but is so sad about her failing marriage and learning-disabled son (Dante Brown) that she feels paralyzed.

Jamie corners Nona one day and urges her to get together and file an application with the Pittsburgh school board to take over their troubled elementary school, recruit the best teachers, win over parents, and shake off the union. It proves a huge and controversial undertaking. Jamie also starts a romance with a music teacher (Oscar Isaac) who feels conflicted about fighting the union.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Adult characters drink. Jamie and her new romance have some steamy kisses. SPOILER ALERT: We hear Nona tell her son Cody a story about how she drank too much wine when he was little and got into a car accident with him.

“Pitch Perfect” PG-13 — A deliciously witty script and a cast of winning young performers make this movie about college a cappella groups competing for a national championship not only musically enjoyable, but a major hoot. It pours all the angst of college life into something much sexier and funnier than organic chemistry.

Beca (Anna Kendrick), a surly freshman, furious about her parents’ divorce, enrolls at the college where her dad (John Benjamin Hickey) teaches. She wants to be a record producer and would rather skip college, so she plans to sulk instead.

Then she’s recruited by the school’s all-girl a cappella team, the Bellas, led by Aubrey (Anna Camp), a control freak who projectile vomits when challenged. Seriously.

Beca thinks they keep losing competitions — unlike the school’s winning male a cappella group, the Treblemakers — because Aubrey’s taste is so 20th-century. Eventually, there is a showdown over who will lead the Bellas.

They are a winningly diverse group of girls, the most hilarious of whom calls herself Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson). Beca soon becomes vested in making the Bellas winners. She also falls for a Treblemaker, Jesse (Skylar Astin), which is against the rules.

John Michael Higgins and Elizabeth Banks as acidic commentators at the competitions are a riot.

THE BOTTOM LINE: All the lighthearted patter about sexuality and women’s body parts makes the film too adult for a lot of middle-schoolers. The dialogue features considerable crude language, some profanity, frequent use of rhymes-with-witch, and lots of pure snarkiness. Ethnic stereotypes abound, used for comic effect. A long scene in the dorm shower implies nudity, but with little sexual innuendo. Rarely has projectile vomiting been more gross and astounding than in this movie.

“House at the End of the Street” PG-13 — The rating may say PG-13, but the violence and implications of insanity and abuse in this film make it a very problematic choice for middle-schoolers. That noted, “House at the End of the Street” features a solid cast and keeps you guessing, at least for a bit, so high-schoolers into psycho-thrillers may find it diverting. And it stars Jennifer Lawrence, famous for playing Katniss Everdeen in “The Hunger Games” (PG-13, 2012).

Elissa (Lawrence) has come to live with her divorced mom (Elizabeth Shue). After a long estrangement, their relationship is still rocky. Mom has rented a nice house at a good price. That’s because it’s near a house where a child murdered her parents 14 years before. Only Ryan (Max Thieriot), the surviving brother, lives there and keeps to himself, as the town and the teen bullies either snub or harass him.

Against her mother’s wishes, Elissa befriends the quiet Ryan, who tells her the story behind his family tragedy. But the tale proves far more complex than Elissa realizes.

THE BOTTOM LINE: In a prologue, we see the murder of the parents, with the child wielding a heavy lamp. We hear screams and other sounds, but see little, except drops of blood and pillow feathers. In flashbacks, Ryan’s parents smoke what appears to be crack. The script includes a verbal suicide joke and some sexual innuendo. Teens are shown partying and perhaps drinking beer. SPOILER ALERT: We see girls held hostage, drugged and suffocated, and there are stabbings and shootings.

“Looper” R — Sci-fi and action-movie fans 17 and older will get some thrills and intellectual tickles watching “Looper,” a movie whose premise is so complex, it’s explained in a prologue and re-explained throughout the film. Just know first that the medieval-looking shotgun used in “Looper” is called a blunderbuss and that it knocks victims back several feet, blowing a very big hole in them, with much blood and some guts depicted.

The year is 2044. Time travel is not yet invented, but it exists in the 2070s, though it is illegal. Gangsters in the 2070s use it to transport people they want killed back to 2044, where richly paid assassins called “loopers” blow them away. The victims appear suddenly to the loopers, bound and with bags over their heads. As a looper, you may at any time encounter an older version of yourself and have to kill that person, which is called “closing the loop.” Then you can retire and live wealthily until your violent demise comes back around in real time.

With me so far? Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Joe, a looper who gets in trouble with his boss (Jeff Daniels) for helping a colleague (Paul Dano), who let his older self flee. When Joe meets his own older self (Bruce Willis), he, too, hesitates and becomes a target.

Old Joe has come back to find and kill a child who will grow into the gangster in 2074 who orders all the killing. The old and young Joes alternately stalk each other and try to hash out their situation. A protective mother (Emily Blunt) and her telekinetic little boy (Pierce Gagnon) become their focus.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Young Joe puts drops in his eyes that have a hallucinogenic effect, and he’s addicted to them. In addition to the graphic, body-shattering violence and occasional torture, the film shows partially nude prostitutes and includes some strong profanity.

“Dredd 3D” R — You can’t get more deadpan than playing a role with a helmet always covering your face. Karl Urban does that as the grim-but-fair Judge Dredd in this near-pornographically violent new take on the British comics series (distancing itself from the ill-conceived Sylvester Stallone film “Judge Dredd,” R, 1995).

There is so much bloody, point-blank, high-caliber gun death in “Dredd 3D” (and it’s just as bloody if you save your pennies and see a 2-D print) that the film is not for under-17s.

In a future America that has become “an irradiated wasteland,” a string of “mega-cities” riddled with drugs and violence dominates the mid-Atlantic coast. Judge Dredd and his colleagues in the Hall of Justice catch as many malefactors as they can and act as judge, jury and, if necessary, executioner.

On this day, Dredd takes along a rookie (Olivia Thirlby) who has a mutation that makes her strongly psychic. This turns out to be useful, when they’re trapped in a 200-story tenement run by a drug gang led by Ma-Ma (Lena Headey) and her goons. The characterizations are vivid and the visuals strong, but to what end?

THE BOTTOM LINE: Children and innocent families are shown at risk and dying in the deafening and graphic gun battles. The bad guys are selling a new drug called Slo-Mo that creates a slow-motion high. The movie includes strong profanity and graphic sexual fantasies.